Fiorile

Flowers

The great Italian directors of Padre, Padrone and Kaos interweave three stories dramatizing the struggle between idealism and avarice within a powerful Tuscan dynasty. A terrible and remunerative betrayal of love and youthful optimism at the time of Napoleon’s campaign in Tuscany taints successive generations of the Benedetti dynasty until they become known in the present day as the murderous Maledettis – the cursed.

Fiorile teems with the pleasures of storytelling: plots, betrayals, vengeance, ghosts, disguises, firing squads and poisoned picnics. The less we tell you here the more we leave up the sleeves of masters.

The film takes its name from the French Revolutionary calendar’s name for May and its vision of idealistic fervour has the shimmering splendour of a high spring day. The destructive power of greed is endowed in the film with a terrible inevitability; this is a legend in which the forces of darkness constantly threaten to prevail. - B.G

Fiorileharks back to the glory days of Night of the Shooting Stars and reaffirms the revolutionary dream of ‘Liberty! Equality! Fraternity!’ that has always been their North Star. This lovely new film is something of a comeback – the brothers’ most enjoyable work in a decade… Fiorile has many transcendent moments, including some camera moves so thrilling only an Italian would dare them… With its bright, dreamy style and grandiose passions, Fiorile has the hallucinatory directness of a folktale. - David Denby, New York 31/1/94